About three years ago, “Soundcloud rap” emerged as a catchall for a variety of aggressive, rock-influenced hip-hop made by digital natives operating outside the mainstream. It often felt unhelpful to group together rappers whose styles were tugging hip-hop in several different directions, and naming that incohesive group after a streaming service didn’t make the situation more clear. But the ambiguity of the Soundcloud rap category has also allowed it to include artists who move in several different directions all by themselves, producing saccharine ballads about heartache side by side with brash rippers that sound ready to blow your speakers no matter how quietly you play them. Misanthropic New York group City Morgue definitely lean toward the latter: their lurid, hostile tracks borrow from Memphis rap’s sinister sonics, nu-metal’s pop-friendly heaviness, and crunk’s delirious shouts. On December’s City Morgue Vol. 2: As Good as Dead (Republic), the dark, downcast instrumentals of producer Thraxx inflict both dread and desire, while the bellicose bars of rappers ZillaKami and SosMula seethe even when they switch from throaty screams to melodic quasi-singing (as they do on “The Give Up”). City Morgue’s current tourmate, TikTok phenom Tokyo’s Revenge, has taken off by mixing lovelorn R&B singing with the syllable-jammed aggro rapping popularized by fellow Floridian Ski Mask the Slump God. On the 2019 EP Mdnght (Side B), released by the Blac Noize! label, he veers between these two poles. He’s most magnetic on the anxious ballad “Drug Lullaby,” transplanting the morbid histrionics of third-wave emo into a tortuous performance tinged with vulnerability that’s hard to pin down. v
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